The Liberal Democratic Party will step up efforts this year to revise the Constitution, a long-cherished goal of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. To lay the groundwork, the LDP hopes to start talks with other parties as early as March. This will produce a draft ...

The Self-Defense Forces will be able to come to the aid of a U.S. naval ship under attack once Japan completes its historic shift in defense policy, Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said Friday. In a visit to Washington, Onodera reviewed the hypothetical scenario while ...

The government and the ruling camp are not considering an extension of the ongoing regular session of the Diet beyond the scheduled end on June 22, informed sources said Friday. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said that he will not rush to change the ...

China wants to make World War II a key part of a trip by President Xi Jinping to Germany next month, much to Berlin’s discomfort, diplomatic sources said, as Beijing tries to use German atonement for its wartime past to embarrass Japan. China has ...

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pushing for constitutional change. Yet he is playing the political huckster by proposing to first only fiddle with the amendment procedure in Article 96, lowering the threshold for the process to move forward from the approval of two-thirds of ...

If the Liberal Democratic Party succeeds in rewriting the Constitution, it would severely scale back fundamental human rights and strip the public of various civil liberties, a prominent constitutional scholar warns. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, while focusing for now on his economic policies, looks ...

Whether it happens or not depends heavily on the results of the upcoming House of Councilors elections, but Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has clearly announced his intention to make amending the Constitution a campaign issue. Although his Liberal Democratic Party issued a comprehensive amendment ...

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had to dispel suspicions Sunday that a Yomiuri Giants uniform he received as a gift at the People’s Honor Award ceremony was linked to his plan to weaken Article 96 of the Constitution. The jersey he received bears the number ...

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has urged opposition groups Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party) and Your Party to help him revise Article 96 of the Constitution to make it easier to amend the supreme code. “I’m asking for cooperation in forming a majority” ...